There has been lot of debate in recent months on outsourcing both in the U.S. and India and it now appears to have subsided. Two things were exaggerated. One was its impact on the U.S. workforce and second was the R and D nature of outsourcing which was talked about by the Indian media endlessly.

While we have the competence to do ITES, BPO, animation work, call centers etc giving valuable jobs to millions of graduates, it is not a self sustaining scenario in the long run. There are many structural problems to be addressed before India can be on a stable trajectory in the S and T sphere. In certain areas we have excelled such as nuclear power, space and some of the Sciences. To quote Tom Friedman who wrote positively about the IT sector in India in the NY Times as well as in his book ‘ India has the hardware of democracy but not the software namely a reliable infrastructure and good governance’.

He concludes rightly that this will limit the level of innovation that India can do in the IT area. He did not touch upon another important aspect namely the quality of manpower needed to make a meaningful jump into the Hi-Tech areas in terms of innovation.

While the industry leaders are quite aware of these gaps, unfortunately the media is not. A recent report by the U R Rao committee has brought into sharp focus the big gap we have in terms of post graduate workforce in engineering.

Infrastructure spans all the way from good roads, sanitation, clean water, primary education to good airports and a system to support of all of these, namely a reliable electric power supply. We know that in all these areas there is much to be desired. It is not however impossible to make progress on these fronts provided there are committed foot soldiers all the way from top to bottom.

Except perhaps in the IT area we do not have such a set up. In the absence of such “software’, India will continue to be the BPO of the western world and continue the ITES type of work. No doubt it employs millions of people but will it last long before some innovative idea from the US or the West displaces it or other nations give competition to India? These are some of the questions our leaders need to grapple with and not celebrate some temporary gains. Take the power sector for example.

Even before we have achieved technical competence in managing grid operation and distribution well, we have rushed into power sector reforms. Unbundling of the Electricity boards is to be welcomed as a precursor to efficient management of the different entities. However rushing into the market aspects of power trading when there is country wide shortage of power is not desirable except perhaps for a few interested parties.

Trying to catch up with the latest buzz words of the West seems to be the norm instead of concentrating on the fundamentals.

When the country gained Independence in 1947, all it inherited from the British was a good railway system, small core of intelligentsia as well English based science education and abject poverty. The country was lacking the basic essentials like food grains, milk, communication facilities, educational facilities etc.

India was unable to produce anything by itself whether it was steel or heavy power equipment and there was hardly any banking system outside of the big cities. That it has come so far in many areas is a tribute to the founding fathers of independent India . By whatever name one may call it, socialistic or mixed economy, over the years it has made the country self sufficient in milk, food grains, has a well spread out banking system reaching almost every village, a proud indigenous nuclear and space industry and above all a well trained manpower in Science and Technology.

All these were accomplished with democracy in place however flawed it might have been at times. IITs, private engineering colleges, the national laboratories of research were all part of this development process and this model of economic development remains the envy of many developing countries. However this is not enough to achieve the status of a well developed country.

Politically, the country is well integrated. Thanks to people like Nehru, and Patel in the political arena and pioneers like Bhabha (Electronics and Atomic energy), Sarabhai (Space), Swaminathan (Green revolution) and Kurien (Milk revolution), Mahalnobis(Indian Statistical Institute), the country has reached a level of technical self sufficiency. When liberalization started in the early 80’s it was orchestrated carefully with the telecom revolution being the first priority.

The Western model of telephone density was cast aside and replaced by telephone access, a brilliant idea conceived by and implemented by Sam Pitroda who returned to India at that time at the invitation of Rajiv Gandhi. This was followed by the development of the supercomputer, computer ticketing in the nation’s railway system etc. The introduction of the mobile phone and its integration with the existing telecom system is going well.

However as we have seen the fruits of IT have yet to reach the rural side. Before IT, what they need are good roads, water and reliable source of electricity. The banking system nation wide has adapted to the IT applications very well.

Computer revolution which made modest beginnings with Bhabha at the helm in TIFR in the 50’s took firm roots after the 60’s with Institutions like IIT Kanpur, a US aided Institution starting under graduate and graduate programs in Computer Science. Rest of the educational institutions also continued the trend and private outfits teaching various Computer languages and fundamentals flourished.

The big three IT companies in India started during the 60’s and 70’s namely Tata consulting Services, Infosys and Wipro had therefore a ready supply of talent and the rest is history. The transition from Y2K to software development was a logical sequel. The exit of IBM in the 70’s provided a challenge to the Indian IT industry and the industry rose to the occasion

While India can do the lower level IT work efficiently, it has a long way to go before it can move up the value chain or do innovations in terms of brand name software products on its own. A new mantra is therefore needed. One such step is the creation of a second generation of IITs which will concentrate on turning out PhD’s in Engineering and Computer science and who in turn will usher the innovation cycle. The PM alluded to this rightly so in his recent speech. It represents a great challenge for the country and until that becomes a reality, IT will be synonymous with the BPO, call centers, software development and outsourced design for the multinationals. The last named activity is wrongly identified as R and D for India.

In some sense, India is at the cross roads and bold decisions are required in critical areas. A national level think tank is the need of the hour similar to the planning commission in the post independence days. The creation of the Knowledge Commission is a step in the right direction but it must without much delay deliver the correct prescriptions and a viable road map to create the knowledge base for the country in engineering and the sciences. A poor nation like India with 30-40% of the population living below poverty line and a weak infrastructure cannot be a super power as it wants to be, unless it addresses the fundamental issues in the areas of physical as well as S and T educational infrastructure.

The power sector is a classic example where the IT companies and many of the Industries operate in walled enclosures with their captive power. Citizens who can afford, depend on the inverter to face constant interruptions to their power supply. The rest are at the mercy of frequent power interruptions. In the power sector the country perhaps has the largest manpower among the countries in the world. Yet it is nowhere near IT in terms of efficiency or innovation or competence. Water sector similarly requires better use of technology and rain harvesting techniques.

The country is however fortunate to have an excellent set of young people coming out of the 10+2 system and the elite IIT system must be expanded in a bold way by giving leading NITs and Institutions of proven quality in different parts of the country the IIT status to give good quality education to at least 10% of the 200,000 odd students who take the JEE entrance exam. They are as capable as the students who enter the top state universities in the US . It is a shame that we have done very little to rectify the situation over the years.

Thus the Govt. faces the challenge of connecting the dots in an imaginative way in the S and T sphere. It is well to remember the first PM of India who because of his unshakable faith in Science made many things possible and which we take for granted.


M. A. Pai is Professor Emeritus of Electrical and Computer engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was previously on the faculty of IIT Kanpur from 1963-81and Dean of R and D from 1976-78. He runs a web site www.indusscitech.net devoted to Science and Technology in India.